The Biggest Music Tech Innovations & Trends of 2017 — So Far

From studio-friendly apps and sleek hardware reissues to RFID wristbands, smart speakers and VR, we've rounded up 17 of the biggest music technology trends and developments in 2017 so far

Brian Haack

GRAMMYs

Oct 5, 2017 - 12:18 pm

2017 has been a banner year for advancements in music technology.

The shifting landscape of the industry has seen some amazing product launches in both the hardware and software sectors, as well as a massive increase in music-based startups that have drawn huge funding based on cutting-edge technologies, each promising to address the post streaming-era value gap in a unique way.

Let's examine some of the biggest trends in industry practices and technological innovations that have hit the market over the past year.

Apps, Apps, Apps

The exploding market for software-based production tools has led to a massive upsurge in the availability of tailored audio tools for tablets and smartphones, with a concurrent growing market for peripherals that allow those devices to plug directly into traditional studio gear. Applications ranging from synthesizers to modular midi controllers to complete digital audio workstations are now all available for your preferred tablet, smartphone, or mobile device. Still concerned whether a relatively inexpensive DAW or synth app can produce professional results? GRAMMY-nominated producer and artist Steve Lacy (of The Internet) produced "PRIDE.," from Kendrick Lamar's chart-topping album, DAMN.entirely on his iPhone.

Classic Gear Refreshes & Reissues

Even while the suite of mobile/tablet audio production offerings expands steadily, there still remains a strong demand for the reliability and dedicated application of hardware. With the popularity of dance/electronic music in major domestic and international markets continuing alongside the persistent practice of mining musical nostalgia for nuggets of pop gold, many synthesizer manufacturers have hit pay dirt by resurrecting and re-releasing updated versions of their classic gear. Companies like Roland and Moog have closely watched the growth in popularity of samples and software recreations of their best-known 70s and 80s gear and have rebirthed venerable items like the TR-808 drum machine and the Minimoog Model D.

"Rewinding" To Old Formats

Despite the fact that music consumption via streaming has seen a 76 percent year-over-year increase, international consulting firm Deloitte estimates that vinyl record sales will still comprise about 6 percent of all music industry revenue for 2017. The returning demand for vinyl is thought to be based largely on the desire for a physical good that accompanies or supplements the less tangible experience of streaming music. The bottleneck with vinyl, however, is the higher cost and relatively small number of pressing plants still in operation. The solution that has presented itself is perhaps even more unlikely than the resurgence of vinyl: the rebirth of the cassette tape. The format still has a long way to go before it will compete with vinyl's current sales numbers (which could top 40 million units this year), but the cassette format did see a 74 percent increase during 2016, according to Nielsen's year-end report.

Cashless Concerts?

RFID wristbands have emerged as a staple of major music festivals. Along with the added protection against ticket fraud and other security concerns, the wristbands have begun to incorporate a wider suite of additional features. These often include various ways of capturing audience data points for later analysis and event management iteration, but a big area of interest has been the move to "cashless concerts" and live music experiences. Research has demonstrated that customers using mobile pay apps via their smartphones for food and drink purchases tend to spend more heavily than they do when pulling cash or a card out of their wallets, and some festivals have begun adding mobile pay features to the RFID chips in their festival wristbands. The next big thing, now that this tech is being increasingly proven in the large-scale festival scene, is exploring how it will scale down to smaller venues. Cashless concerts at your local venues? The wait may be shorter than you think.

App Integration Deals For Streaming Services

Concurrent with the massive spikes in streaming music consumption, the major players in the digital service providers market have made big strides in ensuring their products stay in use as easily and as often as possible. This pursuit of an "always on" status for music apps has to potential to reap huge benefits as the market continues to ripen. Earlier this year, Spotify and Waze inked a deal that makes it easier to control each other's products without leaving one app or the other. Meanwhile, Apple Music and Ticketmaster have built a new partnership integrating easy ticket purchases and tracking of upcoming show dates from directly within the music app. Amazon has rolled out greater internal integration between its own piece of flagship hardware, the Echo, and Amazon Music, even introducing "Alexa" functionality as a new personal assistant function for smartphones, intended to compete with Apple's Siri and Android's Bixby.

Hi-Fi Streaming

A major concern that still lingers even as streaming continues to dominate the industry is the audio quality bottleneck: so much work gets put into sonic quality, soundstage presence, and many other aspects of production, just to end up compressed and downscaled and beamed through tiny smartphone speakers. With improvements in data transfer rates for smartphones and increasing adoption of fiber-optic networks capable of higher bandwidth around the country, it has become substantially more feasible for streaming services to investigate high-fidelity, or even completely lossless, streaming offerings. The Recording Academy's Producers & Engineers Wing also reaffirmed its commitment to helping the industry pursue high-fidelity streaming earlier this year with a unique hi-res "Audio Pavilion" at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Smart Speakers Mean Good News For Streaming

Voice-controlled smart speakers like Google Home, Amazon Echo and the forthcoming Lenovo Smart Assistant, among others, have been steadily infiltrating homes since 2014. Earlier this year, research firm eMarketer estimated that nearly 35.6 million Americans would use a voice-activated speaker at least once per month during 2017 — marking an astounding 128.9 percent year-over-year growth. Amazon’s Echo still owns approximately 70.6 percent of the market share, and with the recent integration of the Echo's Alexa personal assistant capabilities with new mobile app functionality and Amazon Music Unlimited, there's no question that streaming services will see a usage boost from the uptick in smart speaker adoption in American homes over the coming years.

Playlists: The Human Element

When Pandora launched in the early 2000s, it revolutionized internet radio with its then unheard-of technology, built on the back of its founders' previous endeavor, The Music Genome Project, which introduced the world to automated algorithmic music selection. This and similar tech would become the backbone of many streaming services' recommendation features for the next decade and beyond. However, 2017 has seen a marked shift back to the integration of a human element into some aspects of playlist curation. Since Spotify introduced their Discover Weekly feature back in 2015, it's been estimated that around 8,000 artists owed at least half of their streaming plays to the weekly human-curated playlist 2016. Silicon Valley has taken note, and the practice of bringing back in the human element to automated services both in and outside the music industry has been all the rage.

I, Composer Robot

On the flip side of streaming services bringing in humans to displace algorithms, robotics and artificial intelligence researchers are starting to pave the way for original music composed entirely by machine. Using deep learning algorithms and big data analysis techniques, Ph.D. researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have built a marimba-playing robot that is capable of devising and performing original melodies and song structures, including complete multi-part harmonies and chord progressions. The resulting robot, Shimon, is the result of nearly a decade of research.

Look Up, Look Down, Look All Around

The buzz around VR and 360 video peripherals has been quietly building, still waiting for the big "killer app" to push the market in one direction or another. One area that's showing huge promise is the potential to incorporate 360 video into the live concert experience for fans unable to get tickets or make travel arrangements to attend their favorite shows and music festivals. On Oct. 4 GRAMMY-nominated band Matchbox Twenty broadcasted a concert from Denver that was being billed as the "first fan-controlled virtual reality experience." Alongside live music broadcast in 360 video, 2017 has seen numerous artists, including the Chemical Brothers and Gorillaz, release VR and 360 experience music videos. These cautious steps into a new medium are just the beginning —expect the market to explode in the coming years.

Augmented-Reality Instruments & Interfaces

Another outgrowth of the rise of VR and 360 video peripherals has been the development of augmented reality technology — that is, virtual images overlaid on physical surroundings so they can be explored within a real-world space. Synth hardware manufacturer Behringer has now launched an augmented reality interface for their new flagship synthesizer, the DeepMind 12. What's particularly exciting about this new technology is the potential to begin incorporating augmented reality into the studio space, allowing engineers and producers to truly "see" their mix processes in a previous unthinkable way.

Ditching The Wires In The Studio

Another exciting development may soon be hitting studios everywhere: wireless recording. Earlier this fall, iZotope debuted their first piece of audio hardware, the Spire Studio. Hailed as a fully wireless location recorder that will help "songwriters and musicians of all genres to capture, edit, and collaborate seamlessly," the device includes multitrack recording and mixing capabilities, a suite of digital effect plug-ins, and integration with a smartphone apps that enables collaborators to instantly share demos and tracks whether they're in the room or across the country. While a device like the Spire won't replace a fully equipped studio setup anytime soon, it does present an intriguing step forward for artists who spend much of their time on the road.

Austin: Tech Capital

Austin, Texas, has long been known as the "live music capital" of the U.S., but in recent years it has also taken its place among the U.S. cities creating the most tech jobs, after topping Forbes' list of the same name in 2015. Whereas once the idea of a music-tech startup may have seemed like an outside shot for Silicon Valley insiders, the success of mobile app start-ups paired with the success of major streaming service giants have shown investors that music technology is a horse they'd be fools not to bet on.

Artist Amplification Alternatives

The late 2000s and early 2010s made it clear that streaming platforms built on user-generated content like YouTube and SoundCloud could be as instrumental in building grassroots fan bases for unknown artists as they could be in supporting the careers of top-tier talent. Furthermore, SoundCloud's recentstumbles elicited an unprecedented outpouring of support from artists who'd built their careers on the platform, with even Chance The Rapper stepping up to try to help save the service. That's an impressive vote of confidence, not just in SoundCloud itself, but in the necessity of artist amplification platforms —expect investors eyeing similar companies to take note.

Digital/Influencer Marketing Tools

The DIY ethos of independent music is not a sentiment that's lost on emerging artists today. The idea that a music creator must not only craft works of art but also understand the importance of being business savvy is tantamount to a successful career in 2017. However, today's artists must be more than creators and more than businesspeople — they must be savvy digital marketers. Whether it's self-promoting shows and capturing fans' emails and behavior data using scalable platforms like Splash, connecting with local influencers to help amplify their social media presence, or simply staying on top of new platforms like Musical.ly and leveraging their presence as an early-adopter, the artist's toolset for building their audience and brands is now effectively limitless.

Data-Mining: The New A&R

Tech experts predicted as far back as 2015 the big data analysis was the coming wave that would upend the traditional model of A&R. In the years since, a handful of start-ups have built their business around becoming the aggregator that labels may someday look to as they cast their nets in search of their next signing. Musx, one such company, builds its algorithmic recommendations around a holistic look at fans' listens, comments, and saved tracks, applying a proprietary weighting system that balances the value of each metric with a focus on shares and re-shares. In short, it seeks to track and predict virality.

A similar methodology is employed by The Next Big Sound, a nearly 10-year-old company recently acquired by Pandora. Using analysis of streaming plays, social shares, and other data points, The Next Big Sound's end goal is to predict what songs, artists, and albums are most likely to hit the Billboard charts next. Their predictions have been leveraged by global brands such as Pepsi that are in the market for new talent to tap into for major advertising pushes and culture marketing initiatives.

Buying Into The Blockchain

All of the technological developments achieved in recent years will add up to very little if the central concern of the modern music industry cannot be addressed eventually: creatives need to be paid, and they need to be paid fairly. The blockchain, Silicon Valley's latest and hottest buzzword, may provide part of the solution to this issue. It all comes back to metadata. Countless creative professionals working in the music industry go under- or even completely unpaid each year due to incomplete or absent metadata. Bands may change representation, small labels become acquired by larger conglomerates, license holders may transfer or sell the rights to a given piece of music, tracks get re-recorded or re-mix/mastered for compilation releases, or any one of thousands of other reasons end up obfuscating the paper trail of who worked on what, when and under what contract.

As GRAMMY winner Imogen Heap, writing for Harvard Business Review, pointed out, "one of the biggest problems in the industry right now is that there's no verified global registry of music creatives and their works." The decentralized and competitive nature of the music industry presents an extremely difficult knot to untangle. What's exciting about blockchain technology is that untangling difficult knots is precisely the type of problem it was designed to solve. Utilizing blockchains, a central repository of creative licensing information could be collected and continually reconciled and self-verified for accuracy — potentially enabling a system of fair attribution, accounting and compensation for all parties involved.

Facebook Unveils New Creators Tools For Independent Brand Development

The new tools expand the functionality of Facebook Live and position Facebook Stories to better compete with Snapchat

Brian Haack

GRAMMYs

Nov 17, 2017 - 12:41 pm

Bands, lifestyle brands, and other independent creators may soon get a leg up in the world, thanks to a new suite of tools unveiled on Facebook today: the Facebook Creators app.

Aimed at servicing content creators and rising movers-and-shakers in creative industries, the new app provides a host of expanded plugins for Facebook users' Brand or Public Person pages, all of which can be used directly from their phone or mobile device.

Perhaps the most exciting addition is the introduction of the Live Creative Kit, which provides exclusive tools for users to tailor the brand experience of their Facebook Live broadcasts by adding custom intro/outro bumpers, graphic frames that can be displayed during the livestream, and custom live stickers that users can select to interact with the broadcast in unique and brand-specific manner.

All Live Creative Kit features will be easily accessible directly from the user's smartphone or mobile device, and will integrate with a newly added suite of camera and frames to expand the functionality of Facebook Stories to align more closely (read: better compete with) rival apps like Snapchat.

On the back-end of the site, creators and brand/community managers will be able to enjoy a new Community Tab, which features a unified inbox capable of centralizing all Facebook/Instagram comments and direct messages from Messenger into a single communications portal, as well as expanded Insights data for tracking and building fan engagement.

Alongside the new tools, Facebook has also rolled out a new learning resource they're calling Facebook For Creators, which will field new users Frequently Asked Questions and host articles and videos aimed at providing "tips on how to create great videos, connect with fans, and grow on Facebook."

In a statement about their new services, reps for Facebook said, "We are just getting started, and look forward to continuing to work collaboratively with creators to make their experience on Facebook even better."

Facebook Creators app is currently only available on iOS devices, but the company plans to roll out Android support as well in the coming months.

GarageBand's Latest Update Opens New Doors For Mobile Music-Making

Learn how Apple's innovative music-making mobile app just got even more powerful

Brian Haack

GRAMMYs

Nov 1, 2017 - 4:58 pm

In the early days of mobile music-making, Apple's GarageBand mobile app immediately set itself apart from the competition by offering an excellent distillation of the complete feature set of its desktop counterpart, which itself is the younger sibling of Apple's flagship digital audio workstation, Logic Pro.

GarageBand 2.3's newly-expanded feature set addresses two shortcomings: the relatively small selection of stock sounds and instrument kits, and lack of a traditional drum sequencer like one might find in Ableton Live or FL Studio.

As of this newest update, users can now access Apple's new Sound Library, which includes a host of free downloadable instruments and sound packs to expand the apps sonic palette. As in the past, third-party plugins will continue to be standalone offerings separately available from the App Store, but the new Sound Library rekindles hopes that we may someday see a similar "Plugin Library" or similar expansion allowing even wider opportunities to find new sounds.

Along with the Sound Library, Apple has also added the Beat Sequencer, a solution for drum programming that offers more precise control that finger tapping the 4x4 drum pad grid without the tedium of typing MIDI notes into a piano roll one at a time.

Lastly, a less-trumpeted feature addition brought in with the new update is that the app now fully supports 24-bit audio, meaning producers and hobbyists alike can rest assured that any beats they develop in GarageBand mobile will be exported at a standard high enough standard of audio quality to stand alongside professional recordings made using the apps desktop cousin and big brother DAWs.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs Break Out 'Fever To Tell' Tracks At First Show In 4 Years

The band played the majority of their GRAMMY-nominated debut album at their first full concert in four years

Brian Haack

GRAMMYs

Oct 26, 2017 - 2:14 pm

GRAMMY-nominated indie rockers the Yeah Yeah Yeahs recently gave their breakout debut album Fever To Tell the deluxe reissue treatment. Just last night, the early 2000s NYC scenesters performed their first full concert in four years, and the gathered audience of fans at L.A.'s Fonda Theatre received a rare treat.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs played almost all of Fever To Tell last night, but — keeping faith with the way they've approached pretty much their entire career — they did it in their own weird way.

Rather than simply playing the record front to back, the group shuffled the song order, left out a few tracks (namely "Man" and "No No No") and managed to sneak the album's hidden track, "Poor Song," into their encore victory lap.

Concerts & Technology: The Future Is Now

From fan-friendly apps and RFID bracelets to virtual reality, augmented reality and holograms, technology is changing how we experience live concerts

Chuck Crisafulli

GRAMMYs

Oct 26, 2017 - 9:24 am

During Matchbox Twenty's A Brief History Of Everything tour this year, fans who couldn't physically get to a concert could still enjoy the show: The GRAMMY-nominated band made use of state-of-the-art 360-degree cameras to present a fully immersive, fan-controlled virtual reality experience of their Oct. 4 performance in Denver. Additionally, fans purchasing VIP tickets could employ cutting-edge technology to get even closer to the band by entering a virtual space as a hologram to sing alongside a hologram of frontman Rob Thomas.

VR is just one example of the wide range of technologies — from apps and RFID bracelets to augmented reality and holographic projection — that is having a profound impact on the way audiences experience live music. To forward-thinking artists like Thomas, the future for concerts and technology is now.

"I think we're at the moment where this stuff is really here," says Thomas. "There's skepticism, but I also remember when people were skeptical about whether the internet would take off. When Matchbox Twenty started, we connected with fans through bumper stickers and cassette tapes. Twenty years later, we're in virtual reality, which is pretty amazing. But with every jump forward in technology, it's still about connecting with fans."

In the near future, it's likely virtual reality concerts will shift from newsworthy to commonplace, but technology is also opening up some brave new possibilities for live shows themselves.

Metal fans looking ahead at this winter's concert schedule may be surprised to learn that Ronnie James Dio, who died in 2010, will be back on the road for a series of European shows starting in November. Attendees at the shows will indeed be hearing the estimable voice of Dio, but what they will see onstage will be members of his longtime band fronted by a hologram.

"Ronnie was always an innovator in music so why not an innovator in technology?" asks Wendy Dio, the singer's longtime manager. "There are plenty of fans of Ronnie's that would love to see him back up on the stage, and there a lot of people that never had a chance to see him — this is the only way that's possible now. I'm hoping I have Ronnie's blessing because I think this is the wave of the future and I think as more people experience it, they'll accept it.”

Eyellusion is the Los Angeles-based hologram company recreating Dio for the stage, and the company has also teamed with Frank Zappa's estate to produce a new show centered on the iconoclastic artist. While the idea of bringing back deceased artists in virtual form has sparked debate, Eyellusion CEO Jeff Pezzuti points out that the technology can do much more.

"Hologram technology might be the main part of a show, or just part of a live show, or a way of capturing something for posterity that's never been possible before," Pezzuti explains. "And the digital assets we create can move across platforms into all sorts of uses. We know a hologram is not the real thing, but it's close enough now to have you walk out of a show saying, 'Holy s***!' We want to create those 'holy s***' moments."

The Zappa concerts are planned for late 2018 and will include a variety of holographic elements sharing the stage with musicians who toured and recorded with Zappa.

"My father was a futurist and a visualist who wanted to do this kind of thing in his lifetime," says son Ahmet Zappa, a co-trustee of the Zappa estate and an executive with Eyellusion. "'Hologram' describes the way in which Frank can come back, but that's a limited way of thinking. Really, what we're doing is using technology to unleash a whole new way of witnessing the bizarre world of Frank Zappa. It won't be just watching a hologram play guitar. If the band's performing Frank's song "Stink-Foot," maybe it's sung by an 800-pound snakeskin platform boot. That's a different approach than what you'd expect for Dio, but it fits Frank."

Some might be tempted to write off such new technology as a novelty rather than a game-changer. But, according to Matchbox Twenty manager Nick Lippman, that depends on how the technology is used.

"It's only a gimmick if you don't know what you're doing with it," explains Lippman. "If you just step into the technology without a clear intention of what you're doing as an artist, it's not going to feel authentic. Artists shouldn't fit themselves to new technology — the technology has to actually serve the artist and the artist's fans."

Many industry insiders are embracing new technology as a boon to the concert business. Kevin Chernett, executive vice president of global partnerships & content distribution at Live Nation, oversees live streaming and virtual reality projects for the entertainment company, which this summer live-streamed Coldplay's massive A Head Full Of Dreams concert in virtual reality.

"People are having their first VR experiences now and are surprised to find that the VR evokes the same emotions and thrills and energy that you'd feel when you're actually at a show — people stand up for the encore just like they would at the arena," says Chernett. "But we don't see any indication that people prefer their living room to the actual experience of a concert — all the technology actually helps to promote the live experience."

At those live experiences, concertgoers may not even be aware of the degree to which cutting-edge technology shapes what they're hearing and seeing.

"There have been quantum leaps forward in terms of the sound and lighting technology that's present in modern-day concerts compared to what it was a decade ago," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert trade publication Pollstar. "From the visual and audio perspective, we're producing a much higher-quality event all around and the technology is top notch — though it still takes talent onstage to make it all work."

Roger Waters' current Us +Them tour features lighting controlled by infrared sensors, real-time video editing of giant screen images and stage technology so new it's considered to be a prototype. Waters collaborated closely with artistic director Sean Evans to create a high-tech spectacle that would be powerful but still serve to showcase the music.

"We didn't want the tail to wag the dog," says Evans. "'Oh, here's some cool technology, let's find a way to use it.' On a tech level, there are all these great crazy new toys, but on a creative level you still have to figure out how to use it all in a compelling way."

One effect in Waters' show — a laser-light representation of the prism from the album cover of Pink Floyd's 1973 album, Dark Side Of The Moon — was designed with a very specific purpose in mind.

"That image has been all over Instagram," says Evans. "And that was the idea — we wanted to make something iconic that people were going to put all over social media. It's a weird way to think about a show, but that's the environment now."

Technology is also extending the concert experience and upgrading audience amenities.

Apps such as Pavemint help concertgoers find parking before the show while others help order food that can be delivered during the show. RFID bracelets enable festival attendees to go cashless, and USB bracelets let fans leave a venue with a download of the show they just witnessed. Live Nation recently launched a Facebook Messenger bot that lets the social experience of the concert begin during the ticket-buying process.

"I don't look at this kind of technology as a demographic thing — it's a psychographic thing," says Lisa Licht, chief marketing officer at Live Nation. "It's for people who really love concerts and are spending so much time on social media. Concerts have always been both a personal and a social experience, and now we're finding ways to bring those experiences together."

Over the next few years, today's extraordinary technology is likely to become ordinary, as financial barriers to entry drop, ease-of-use increases, and artists, fans and the industry embrace new tech-friendly horizons.

Thomas is looking forward to some added benefits of the virtual concert world.

"Fans want to jump onstage with us in VR, but I'm more excited to be out in the crowd watching us play — that's a point of view I've never really had before. And if we get to the point where I could just play the live show and then send my hologram to the after-party to do the mingling, that would be awesome."

(Chuck Crisafulli is an L.A.-based journalist and author whose most recent works include Go To Hell: A Heated History Of The Underworld, Me And A Guy Named Elvis, Elvis: My Best Man, and Running With The Champ: My Forty-Year Friendship With Muhammad Ali.)

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